


Versuchung

by Immortal_With_A_Kiss



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blood Pacts, Canon Compliant, Canon Gay Relationship, M/M, Visions, Young Albus Dumbledore, Young Gellert Grindelwald
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 19:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immortal_With_A_Kiss/pseuds/Immortal_With_A_Kiss
Summary: Despite the many forms and functions, all blood pacts have one thing in common.  They aren't meant to be broken.  When Albus Dumbledore tries to break his pact with Gellert Grindelwald, he discovers exactly what this means.  Sometimes, its not the act itself that is difficult but rather to process required to get to that point in the first place.





	Versuchung

Albus rolled up his sleeves with slow, deliberate movements. Wandlessly, he levitated the last of the books off his desk and onto a neat stack on the floor. All the papers and little trinkets had also been removed, leaving only the pact that he was prolonging looking at for as long as possible. He sighed. It was time. To try, at least. Albus grabbed his wand, his hand almost shaking. His grip was far too tight, the knuckles turning white, but he was in no state to care.

Raising his wand, he turned to look at it. As always, there was a pang in his heart when he saw the pact and the way the two drops of blood were still held in an intimate dance. A flash of memory. Two boys. A barn. Stolen kisses. Impatient hands. A voice. A pair of eyes. Closing his eyes so tightly it almost hurt, he willed the memories of two months of sheer insanity away. They were perfect. They were gone. And their broken memory did nothing but destroy the present so no, he couldn’t think on them.

The first spell he would try, ironically enough, was a spell he’d created during that summer. He opened his eyes to cast the spell. And immediately froze.

How? 

Why?

For a moment he couldn’t breathe as he took in the boy that only existed in the Mirror and in fragments of memories. Gellert sat on his desk like he owned the place, but then he wasn’t one to show discomfort or modesty. It took him a minute to comprehend that Gellert was there in front of him, looking exactly as he did the day they made the pact. And then Albus was entranced by the brilliance in his mismatched eyes all over again, as if he was the same lovestruck teenager he was when they had been together.

“I’m offended.” Gellert said, his words and tone contradicting the easy smile. “After all I gave you, you want to take it back? Our vows, our love? Why, Liebling? Tell me why.”

“You know why.” Albus said with a shuddering breath.

There was something about him that made Albus feel small. Even though in that form, Gellert wasn’t older than some of his students and no student could provoke this reaction from him. Then again, Albus had never slept with a student despite what Gellert’s obvious jealousy suggested he thought about his relationship with Newt.

Gellert frowned. “I don’t actually. You wanted this. You wanted all of it. We planned this together, Al, and you just abandoned everything.”

“You expect me to have followed you after you killed my sister?” Albus asked, putting on a show of anger to hide the weakness in his knees. 

Gellert laughed at that.

“But you don’t know that, do you?” He stood, looking almost predatory as he stalked towards Albus. “It could have been me, yes. But it could have been Aberforth.” He’d reached Albus now and he leaned in close to whisper that last bit in his ear. “Or you.”

Albus drew a heavy breath.

“Does it matter?” Another voice asked, one that was disturbingly familiar. 

Next to his desk was a younger version of himself. The same wiry teenager he’d been when he’d met Gellert. When he’d made the pact. That’s when it clicked. The pact was creating visions to protect itself from harm.

“Even if it was Gellert, why would he want to hurt Ariana? She was family.” 

In some ways, the voice of his younger self was worse. Gellert was temptation and he’d had twenty eight years to practice resisting it. Every time his name appeared in the morning post was another wave of fighting it. But his younger self was a reminder. Of his own folly, his own stupidity and ignorance. And of how he killed his sister. Normally, Albus hated to think on it so he didn’t at all. But this was clawing it out and forcing him to remember the fact that he was damned.

As he should be.

“It’s not about what he wanted, it’s about what he’s willing to do for the so called “greater good”.” Albus said, tightening his grip on his wand further.

“Yes, the Greater Good. And who exactly prescribed that to me?” Gellert said, walking to stand beside Albus’s younger self.

Albus drew a sharp breath at the sight. There was something about them, well their younger selves at least, that fit together. Two pieces of a whole that could only be broken and bitter while separate. The effect was overwhelming and Albus had to shut his eyes in an attempt to push away the longing that bubbled up in his chest. Merlin, how he wanted Gellert. How he needed him. But he could never have what he wanted. Not again.

“A fool.” Albus answered, his voice little more than a whisper. “An arrogant lovesick fool.”

“A fool?” His younger self asked. “To have followed your heart for the only time in your life? No, perhaps you were a fool even then. You shackled yourself to a family who didn’t want you and be honest, that you didn’t want yourself. You denied yourself everything. And now, you’ve locked yourself in your tower. For what? The greater good? What about honoring Ariana?”

“That was an accident.” He said flatly.

There was almost a look of disdain on younger Albus’s face. “And yet muggles are free to perpetuate their ignorance again. How many Arianas need be sacrificed before the ministry would even consider preventative measures?”

“And so I should put my trust in a man who would enslave the muggles for that ignorance?” 

More emotions arose in his chest as his own words, too many for him to even begin to sort through. Repulsion, longing, fear, desire, remorse, affection. All of it a swirling mess that made his heart clench and his hands shake. This needed to end.

“Put your trust in our love!” Gellert said, looking very indignant.

“As if you ever loved me.” Albus was aware this wasn’t the real Gellert but in the moment, it didn’t matter. Things needed to be said and long pent up emotions finally given light.

“I made a pact, an eternal vow in blood. What more could you ask?” Anger flashed in Gellert’s mismatched eyes. He’d always had a temper, though when Albus was younger he had liked to pretend he didn’t.

“If you need to ask, that just proves that you didn’t care enough.” Albus said flatly.

He turned away from the pair and stared at the pact. If he could just destroy it, then this nightmare would all be over. Of course, there was the matter of actually confronting Gellert but he’d manage. Somehow.

“Do you really plan to end this?” His younger self asked. “Erase it all so you can become the Great Albus Dumbledore without a single blemish on your reputation?”

“I’m not erasing anything.” He said, still concentrating on the pact.

“Aren’t you?” Gellert cut in. “If you were hiding nothing, then why do you refuse to admit that you love me when the ministry comes knocking?”

The two of them walked towards Albus, circling him.

“You made the plans, why don’t you sell them out? Save a lot of lives, I’m sure.” His younger self said.

“Because the ministries can’t be trusted.” Gellert continued.

“If they knew what you were, they’d throw you in Azkaban like they did Father. Look around you, all they do is suppress people and force us to cower in fear. Does this not need changing?”

“We can’t live, we can’t love. Because it suits them. What kind of logic is that? It’s time someone showed them enough is enough.”

“We could do it. If you joined Gellert, there wouldn’t have to be any more repression or silence. There wouldn’t be anymore Arianas.”

Albus struck out with his wand, over and over in a blind rage. His breath came short as he shot spell after spell at the two of them. It was bad enough to have the thoughts rattling around in his own head. The last thing he needed was for them to be repeated in a siren’s song driving him to the insanity he had just barely escaped. Every word, every gesture, every expression dragged him back to the heaven of a summer that was so sinful it damned him to hell.

It was only when the window exploded that he realized what he was doing and lowered his wand. His office was thoroughly destroyed. Papers scattered, bookshelves toppled, chair knocked askew. Only the desk remained upright in the destruction, the vial glinting maddeningly in its perfect oasis of safety.

The images of his and Gellert’s younger forms hadn’t waned at all. They just watched him with an air of mixed amusement and disappointment. He fixated on the younger Gellert.

“It wasn’t a mistake to love you but what I became…” He winced at his own words. “what I became was reprehensible. I cannot return to your side, ever. That…” He met his younger self’s eyes. “is how I will honor Ariana.”

“Go and destroy it then.” Gellert said, looking overconfident as always. “If you can renounce me as easily as you say you can then go and do it.”

Albus’s hand trembled because he was right, it wasn’t easy. Even if he knew the right spell, which he didn’t, could he bear to cast it? Tears welled up in his eyes. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of it. But their fates had sealed when Ariana’s body hit the floor and he could never have what he wanted again.

“Go on, erase the evidence. Destroy everything.” Gellert continued goading him. "Maybe you should take a trip to Godric’s Hollow too, obliviate Tante Hilda. Then you could destroy that mirror of yours. Or are you just going to waste all your time staring at it, pining after what you could’ve had if only you chose differently? If only you chose me.”

“I’m surprised you can stand the Mirror.” His younger self said. “Seeing how much of a coward you’ve become since you left Gellert. It’s surprising that you won’t let yourself believe in the fairytale that you’re a good person who sees their broken family reunited or world peace or freedom or anything but the so called “genocidal maniac” you’ve chosen to love.”

“I…”

“You see me. In the Mirror of Desire. Could it not be plainer what you actually want?” Gellert looked indignant again and Albus couldn’t help wondering if that’s how he would really look if they were having that conversation now.

“No.” Albus said quietly. “It’s not you.” And that time he was right. What he truly wanted wasn’t Gellert.

His younger self smiled. “You’re right. You don’t see Gellert because you want him, you see the pact because it’s the moment you’re most certain he wanted _you_ and you see him as he is now because you want that certainty. You want to know that, if there was no pact and he apparated to this room, he wouldn’t kill you.”

It was wrong to have his deepest desire, his most desperate truth read out so flippantly by a vision of his younger self meant to protect the only evidence that his fears weren’t warranted. The very evidence he wished to break. If there was no pact, if there was no proof, how could he say that Gellert loved him? Yes, he’d been over and over and over those memories in the pensieve, though he recalled them immediately after, and found no evidence of Gellert deceiving him but it meant nothing. Gellert was a talented liar and Albus’s memories were from the lens of a lovesick fool.

“It’s okay Albus, I understand. Because I am you.” His younger self continued. “The pact bound our souls and so it can only speak the truth. Neither of us are a lie, you just choose to be blind to the truth.”

“It’s not like there’s not any signs.” Gellert said. “What strategy would have me put my only protection from my greatest enemy in the open? You heard from Scamander where I kept it.”

The disdain in his voice at Newt’s name almost made Albus smile. Even if this was only a shade of Gellert, it still was rather accurate.

“Even if that was true, if I left to join Gellert for the sake of my own heart it wouldn’t be for the greater good would it?” 

It was then that Albus realized the argument had become cyclical. He should return to Gellert for the greater good, regardless of his feelings. He should return because he loved Gellert, regardless of the greater good. Contradictions and paradoxes, that’s all it became.

“Enough is enough. Leave me.” Albus said and the two actually did disappear, the pact sensing that he was too exhausted to try and break it.

He collapsed amidst the rubble of his office, too tired to even cast the spell to fix it. The shades of the two of them danced across his eyelids every time he closed his eyes, their voices echoing in the silence. Fragments of memories, of dreams and nightmares and desires. His breath came unsteady. He wanted Gellert so much it hurt, wanted him so much that he struggled to find another excuse to keep himself away. He was always on the edge of casting away everything he had left for a shadow of a memory of when he had the world. A world that shattered with two spells. One that took away his sister. And the other that took away his lover.

“So you did try to break it.” The voice made him freeze.

It was undoubtedly Gellert’s voice, though it had grown worn with age. He refused to look up at the new shade come to torment him.

“I thought I said to leave me.” Albus said.

“Liebling…” He could feel Gellert right in front of him now. “I have to say, I’m disappointed with how easy it was to crack the wards but then you British have always been terrible at apparition barriers.”

He looked up then, half hoping to truly see his beloved and half hoping it was another vision. Real or not, Gellert looked little like he did in the papers. There was a fondness in his expression, hidden behind shields and barriers meant to hide the truth from everyone. But Albus wasn’t everyone. He was the one Gellert entrusted his heart and soul to. And so he could read that fondness and affection. To his eyes, Gellert wasn’t Gellert Grindelwald, terrorist and murder. He was just Gellert, the boy he had fallen in love with so many years ago.

Albus realized with a jolt that Gellert held the pact in his hand, the chain dangling from his fingers carelessly. Gellert knelt down and placed the pact around Albus’s neck, smiling at the confusion his action caused.

“Do you know why I kept the pact with me?” Gellert’s voice had softened. “Because it was all I had left of you. In my rage, I burnt your letters and destroyed every gift you’d given me. But the pact remained.”

“You won’t take it back?” Albus asked, not believing the show of affection. Gellert was calculating and manipulative. He was not to be trusted. And nor was Albus because of his feelings for him.

Gellert’s expression became pained. “No.”

He stood, turning to hide his face. “If you have cause enough to want to destroy it, then it is already void. I won’t try to stop you.” 

There was the familiar crack of apparition and the man was gone. A simple card fluttered to the ground. Without touching it, Albus could see it had a single inscription. His breath caught at the sight. It was a stylized drawing of the Hollows with the letters GGAD inscribed below it. The symbol of their revolution. Which would never come to pass. Albus took the card tentatively. The line of the elder wand spun, turning to point towards the right corner of the cloak’s triangle. A line pointing to his other half. A final chance to mend things. 

But Albus was forever bound to the greater good. It was his sentence. And it gave him only one choice.

The charm took little more than a thought

And it turned to ash

A shared dream

A name

Gellert

Albus

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this wasn't too pretentious. If you're wondering versuchung is German for temptation and, according to my wonderful German teacher, is the one associated with damnation and sin. This is an idea I've had rattling around my head for ages after I started contemplating ways Rowling could include Grindeldore without having to change her "they didn't meet until the duel" thing (though given how much she likes rewriting canon, a reversal's not impossible). And yes, I'll admit part of this is me wanting to see Jamie actually get to do anything in a HP movie, but is that too much to ask? Well, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Please comment your thoughts!
> 
> -Rei


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